


Rot

by sigo



Series: Rot [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Bottom Armitage Hux, Chancellor Armitage Hux, Darth Tantrum and his Evil Space Ginger, Duel of the Fates, First Order Politics (Star Wars), Idiots in Love, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Protective Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Terminal Illnesses, Top Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:21:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26517382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigo/pseuds/sigo
Summary: Hux caught his reflection in the mirror over the dresser and paused, one gloved hand coming up to touch the growing streak of white-gray in his hair. There was a shock of it right at the front, a veritable stripe, and thickening every year. Not that a skinny frame or fading copper on his head was the worst of Hux’s problems. He had executed the last doctor who examined him. Not in anger -- the poor fellow just had the enormous misfortune of knowing too much. It had started with a twisting in his joints, terrible and hot like a dry rot. Flashes of pain that diminished quickly, worst in his fingers and wrists. In time, it moved inward. Occasionally he got a pulse of it like a lightning strike up his spine. It wasn’t agony yet, but the doctor had warned him (very sympathetically, and that had burned) that it would get worse.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Rot [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931884
Comments: 23
Kudos: 177





	Rot

Hux shrugged out of his mantle as he entered his quarters, ordering the lights on at the lowest setting. Much of the room was already illuminated by the glow of the city outside. He hung the heavy cloak by the door, his fingers tracing the swirling form of an embroidered fish idly. The clothes, like much else in this room, had been a gift. The Supreme Leader wanted his Chancellor to look the part -- that was obvious, however many times Ren objected to ‘grand displays’ or ceremony. The objection was only on behalf of himself. Hux, he covered in finery. Some of the styles were reminiscent of Naboo, which Ren refused to elaborate on and which made Hux feel vaguely embarrassed. He favored things that had ties to Arkanis. That, at least, was easily explained.

 _As if anyone is fooled_. No one who knew the Hux of yesteryear would take his jewelry or lavish furnishings for his own choice. Not that Hux had no personal belongings on the Finalizer, and not that he hadn’t indulged himself with a satin robe, but those had been rare treats. He’d lived a sparse life as the General. He feared now that his men and his subjects thought he was little more than Ren’s pet. Sometimes, he feared that was true. But it wasn’t as though his position was ceremonial. He gave the orders. He was in a more direct position of leadership than Ren was, always gallivanting off into wild space after some Sith artifact or another.

Hux left his shoes by the door, too, and padded silently around the bubbling fountain in the center of the marble floor toward the door to the balcony, stopping off at his dresser. He removed his circlet next. As with robes, he had multiple to choose from. Most often he went with the simple durasteel one he wore today. There was one patterned like gold fern fronds that he reached for when Ren was home as a sort of compromise, and a mortifying red crystal confection he’d never touched. The durasteel circlet went back into its drawer next to its more ostentatious brothers. There were rings and necklaces too that Hux left to collect dust unless he’d be in Ren’s presence.

He started on his underclothes next. Ren was fond of ordering him gowns tailored tight to his frame, accenting the slimness Hux had tried for years to hide. At least robes still did the work of his old General’s greatcoat. He never went without at least two layers. Today’s underthing was crisp white with a neckline jutting straight down to the bottom of his ribcage. It was backless too, with threads of gold lacing it together and heavy First Order pendants sitting right on his skin. The air prickled on his exposed flesh. For a moment he felt watched, and he brushed it off. Ren wasn’t expected back for a fortnight. The white smock came off next, leaving Hux in simple white trousers. He let the fabric crumple on the floor, something he would have never done with a uniform. The droid would straighten it in the morning, and if the delicate thing was ruined he had hundreds more to wear.

He caught his reflection in the mirror over the dresser and paused, one gloved hand coming up to touch the growing streak of white-gray in his hair. There was a shock of it right at the front, a veritable stripe, and thickening every year. Not that a skinny frame or fading copper on his head was the worst of Hux’s problems. If he wasn’t a pet now, he would be soon. How long until he ceased functioning?

Hux had executed the last doctor who examined him yesterday morning, the latest in a long line of predecessors all the way back to the woman who first broke the news to him. Not in anger -- the poor fellow just had the enormous misfortune of knowing too much. It had started with a twisting in his joints, terrible and hot like a dry rot. Flashes of pain that diminished quickly, worst in his fingers and wrists. In time, it moved inward. Occasionally he got a pulse of it like a lightning strike up his spine and through his guts, all the way to his throat. It made him gag on words. He pre-recorded his speeches now, and kept meetings short. He supposed he was through with doctors -- no sense in continuing to take their heads now that he’d exhausted every avenue of treatment. It wasn’t agony yet, but the last doctor had warned him (very sympathetically, and that had _burned_ ) that it would get worse.

He discarded his gloves -- black with red palms, his coy embrace of the crimes the rebels laid at his feet -- and lifted one of the metal cylinders on top of his dresser from its stand. These, too, were gifts. Hux appreciated them a sight more than he did the clothes. It was customary for co-commanders to gift each other things like this once a year, on Empire Day. Hux had done so from the very beginning. He’d given Ren various items related to their war effort. Nice blasters. A grenade, generously not set to explode in Ren’s hands. Ren had responded with nothing at first, not even a thank you, unwilling to recognize their partnership. Then he’d taken to giving Hux socks. Plain black regulation socks, like a joke. That was fine -- Hux was the bigger person and could content himself with that.

After the end of the starship Supremacy and of Snoke within it, Hux had expected all gifts to cease. Ren had choked him into compliance until Hux yielded the title they both wanted, and he’d thought that would be the end of co-commandership. Perhaps Ren would execute him. Perhaps he’d demote him -- maybe to a station beneath _Pryde_ , the horror -- and keep him around to feed his own overblown ego. Neither happened.

Ren had promoted him, putting them on equal station again. He made little fuss over it, telling Hux in his typical surly way, but with the startling addition of a glowing kyber crystal pressed into Hux’s palm. And the gifts had only increased in frequency and grandeur since then. Ren showered him with things of a much higher value than a few pairs of socks, as if making up for lost time. Most of it embarrassed Hux, but these...he liked them.

Hux took the saber hilt out onto the balcony with him and adjusted the way he supported his weight, steadying his feet in the way Ren had shown him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, listening to the sounds of the city around him. The hum of electricity and the drone of passing speeders. The wind flowing through the durasteel maze of spacescrapers. His own heartbeat. He tried to feel what Ren had described to him -- darkness. The remnants of death that would feed new life. Violence. Cold. Energy -- a force. Wild rathtars wouldn’t have drawn this confession from Hux, but sometimes he tried to feel light too. Anything would be better than nothing, but nothing was all he got.

Hux dismissed the spike of jealousy that went through him. He was getting better at that, at least. Letting go. _Just in time_. He refocused: cold. If he couldn’t feel it now, memories would do. He thought of the ocean. Arkanis’s thundering gray seas, an icy salt spray against his face as he looked off the edge of the cliff, cold enough to numb his skin where it touched. Violence. Starkiller’s beam overlaid atop the sight of Hux’s rifle scope, zeroed in on the enemy. One life versus trillions, all extinguished by his hand. Hux ignited the saber in his hand and opened his eyes.

The blade cast the balcony in purple witchlight. Hux moved through the sequence of practice forms he had memorized, slashing the blade through the air, feeling its steady hum in his bones. He ended by bringing the blade around at the second fountain in the center of the balcony, stopping it a millimeter before it would have bit into the marble. It passed through a stream of water and evaporated some of it with a hiss and pop of steam. Hux deactivated the blade with a gasp. He’d hardly felt any of the movements that time. He hadn’t had to think about them.

He wondered what he would feel if he could access the Force like Ren did. Would he feel his own life running out, slipping through his fingers? That might be maddening. Perhaps being ‘Force-null’, as Ren so delicately put it, was a blessing after all. The stars knew he’d subjugated the galaxy without needing magic. For the most part. Not that Ren hadn’t been a help.

“You’ve been practicing,” Ren said. Hux cursed, swiveling toward the sound of Kylo Ren’s voice. He reactivated the saber on instinct, and the expression on Ren’s face approached gleeful wonder. “You’ve mastered technical forms without the Force to guide you. You ought to train with a partner now.”

“You didn’t inform me you were returning sooner than planned,” Hux said, thumbing the blade off again with a scowl and coming inside. He deposited the saber back in its display with the others, among them Ren’s old one with the crossguard. Hux’s eyes lingered on that saber hilt, until he saw Ren watching him in the mirror.

Ren sat on the foot of the bed, his filthy cloak a puddle of black fabric on Hux’s duvet. He’d made himself unnoticed and Hux had walked right by him, had undressed in front of him. Studied his hair in front of Ren like a vain Canto Bight dandy. Hux’s heart pounded. He told himself it was pure anger, though that had been a lie from the very start.

“I’ll get you a battle droid,” said Ren. He gestured with one hand to bring Hux sliding over to him, his bare feet slipping on the marble floor. Hux felt the telltale stab of headache-like pain at the base of his skull that was Ren invading him, and pushed all concerns for his health down. He focused on Ren’s face instead, showing Ren himself through Hux’s eyes.

 _Kylo_.

Hux amended Ren’s name in his mind, shaking off the formality that had been ingrained in him since birth and that Kylo so despised. It was easy to lapse back into it without Kylo in front of him — Hux had certainly _not_ been using Kylo’s name with First Order personnel. The years had not been kinder on Kylo than on Hux. His hair was still black, but he was missing pieces of himself he’d had only months before. Hux cataloged the new additions, meant to make up for the subtractions of flesh. There was a metal plate fused onto his cheek on the scarred side. That eye was so bloodshot that the golden-brown of his iris rested within a solid maroon sclera instead of pink or white. And did that iris seem more gold now than the other one? Kylo’s gums sometimes bled too. They were now; Hux could see it when he grinned.

Kylo’s gloved hands clamped down on Hux’s hips, squeezing through the thin white film of his trousers. Hux’s cock twitched in interest and he let Kylo feel that in his mind too. It was an apt distraction from more unsavory matters.

“I don’t want a battle droid.” It was Hux’s line in the theatre production that was their relationship. Kylo wanted him to refuse the more egregious gifts before accepting them. He wanted to push. Hux genuinely didn’t want this one, and wouldn’t use it when it appeared. Suppose he was struck with a flash of pain during training and failed to dodge a blow? Suppose the injury tipped him over the edge into bedrest? Unthinkable. “You look like something a felinx dragged in.”

“Do you want a felinx?” Kylo teased. Hux did, but he stuffed that down too. He wouldn’t be around long enough to care for one. It would be one more loose end to tie up. Hux clasped Kylo’s face in his hands instead of answering, running a thumb over his plush lower lip to wipe away the blood at the interior of it. Kylo closed his lips around Hux’s thumb and sucked it briefly, licking the pad of it after.

This gift, the heaviest of all, had accompanied Kylo’s old saber. Or this curse. Whichever it was -- Hux changed his mind on that matter frequently. Kylo had swept into Hux’s quarters on the first Empire Day after both their ascensions in title and handed him the unstable weapon hilt which Hux had insulted on more than one occasion. Before Hux could ask whether he should store it in a safe in case it exploded, Kylo had pulled him into a hungry open-mouthed kiss. Hux returned it, and they fell together into bed, the saber hilt hastily lain aside. Hux thought he could have refused the affection if he wanted to. Kylo would grant him that much dignity. It was very possible that Hux could refuse all of Kylo’s attentions and still keep his station. He was valuable. He’d be hard to replace even if Kylo became terribly displeased with him. Hux cut the thought off before he could worry about replacements, circling back around to that kiss. He knew Kylo liked to see him thinking about it, and it was a pleasant memory.

Hux created a new memory now, leaning forward and down to capture Kylo’s mouth. He tasted of iron and ozone. Blood and energy, the dark side of the Force incarnate. One of Kylo’s hands abandoned his hip and the glove was tugged off and floated away so that Kylo could run his bare fingers through Hux’s hair, loosening strands of it and letting them fall forward. Kylo paid the white-gray patch extra mind, his fingertips rubbing warm against Hux’s scalp there.

“I like it,” Kylo murmured into Hux’s mouth.

“I look old.”

“You are old.” Kylo bit Hux’s lower lip and tugged on it. He was teasing -- Hux was barely thirty-eight, Kylo thirty-three.

 _Not as old as I’d like to be_. Hux tried to bury the thought and didn’t succeed; it was insistent. Kylo pulled back to look at him, blank confusion shifting quickly to suspicion. Hux would feel the sickening reel of Kylo digging deeper into his mind unless he offered something else up.

Hux pushed Kylo back onto the bed and climbed on top of him, tearing at straps and clasps. Kylo always buttoned himself up like a….

“A nun,” Hux finished aloud. “A nun fond of leather. This mess is practically a chastity belt, you know that don’t you?”

“Never stopped you before.” Kylo grinned up at him.

Hux raised his eyebrows, allowing for that. It hadn’t been the straps that stopped him, no. A sequence of moments flashed through Hux’s mind, tense meetings in halls before Starkiller, he and Kylo getting in each other’s way for more than intimidation’s sake. Once Kylo had shoved him into a closet and removed his helmet, and they had stared at each other in the gloom. It was the first time Hux had seen his face, and he could remember thinking, _Kriff, he looks like a lost prince_ , and then Kylo had reddened and put the helmet on again, leaving with a swirl of his robes. Kylo had taken his helmet off in Hux’s presence more often after that, and Hux had almost expected to be shoved into a cramped space again and graced with the emergence of more than Kylo Ren’s face from his tattered clothing, but it hadn’t occurred. And Hux wasn’t one to instigate something physical; he’d rather be chased. They courted each other with threats and insults and endless competition instead, hostilities sometimes whispered and sometimes snarled.

Until Snoke was gone. Then Kylo courted Hux with jewels and weapons and fine fabrics cut tighter than an escort’s party dress, and finally with sex. He’d been fumbling at first, and Hux hadn’t bothered to ask about experience. It was plain Kylo had little, if any, but there was something delicious in that too. He’d looked up at Hux with wide eyes -- not gone dark with blood then, only lust -- and finished far too quickly with a startled cry. That was no matter; Hux put Kylo’s mouth to work to finish himself off, the realization of a frequent fantasy. Since that night, they never rejoined without descending immediately into disheveled ecstasy, sometimes in locales that offered less privacy than the situation demanded. Hux was almost certain Mitaka had bumbled by the door of his office and heard things he oughtn’t have on more than one occasion. There was probably talk. Mitaka could be counted on to be discreet, but Hux had hardly been that himself. And Kylo? Jakku would freeze over first. Half of Coruscant probably thought of Chancellor Hux as the Supreme Leader’s plaything.

 _It doesn’t matter_. Kylo’s thought-voice calling Hux back to the present. Ten years ago, in their partnership’s shaky infancy, Kylo might have shamed Hux for wasting thought on the opinions of others. He was gentler now, and no hint of judgement slipped through. He’d tasted the worst of Hux’s memories and fears, and would probably recognize this as a vestige of Hux’s childhood even if Hux didn’t know it about himself.

Hux made his shoulders soften. They’d drawn back and gone rigid in his anxiety. He felt another stab at the base of his skull like a large needle being withdrawn, Kylo mercifully exiting his brain for the moment. Another way of catering to Hux’s nerves, but he’d always be back. Hux ran his palms down Kylo’s chest, now bare of his million pieces of armor. His mouth twitched when one hand found more sensitized metal in place of skin. He hadn’t asked yet what it was that did this. If Kylo was injuring himself trying to harness the Force, Hux didn’t want to know. Kylo would never be persuaded to stop. Hux was aware that he was very hard, a state of being mirrored by Kylo below him. Hux’s trousers did less to hide it than Kylo’s leggings did. The white fabric was going transparent where Hux leaked onto it. Hux pulled the trousers down and discarded them. Kylo was wiggling out of his leggings with less grace below him.

“Shit. Boots,” Kylo grunted. Hux moved off him to the side to let Kylo deal with his own boots; they were like as not to be crusted with dirt and blood from ten systems, which Hux wanted no part of.

“That’s new,” Hux sniffed. Kylo’s left leg was plated in metal from the knee down.

“Didn’t have you there micromanaging,” Kylo said. “Everything _always_ goes perfect for you.”

“Shut up.”

Kylo laughed, and lunged at him. Hux let himself be rolled over onto his back and enveloped without a fuss. He heard his bedside drawer slide open and in the next second there was the familiar flat sound of his bottle of lube smacking into Kylo’s extended palm.

“Which way?” Kylo asked, pressing sloppy kisses along Hux’s cheek and ear.

Hux looked at Coruscant beyond the balcony. The last time they’d been intimate the dry rot had only just begun to flash ember-hot in his fingers. Now it twisted vine-like through every inch of him. Poison. Exertion made the pain worse. Hux did love taking Kylo apart. The thought that he might not get the chance again was torture, but….

“Fuck me,” Hux said. Better not to push himself too far. He was, for the first time in his life, more fragile than he looked.

Kylo slicked his fingers and slipped the first of them into Hux, stretching him and quickly adding a second. Kylo encapsulated Hux’s world for precious minutes, curled over him and drawing him into more kisses, pushing his fingers deep until Hux moaned. Kylo found his prostate from practice instead of Hux’s mind and pressed his fingers against it, curling them up. Hux gasped at the jolt of pleasure that ran through him. Kylo withdrew and added more lube, and then a third finger.

“Missed this,” Kylo said against Hux’s neck. It was as close as either of them ever got to _I missed you_.

Hux’s joints twinged. “Get that monstrous thing you call a cock in me, I haven’t got all night.”

“Haven’t you?”

“I’ve an early meeting tomorrow and could do with an hour or two of sle-- _nng_.”

Kylo scissored his fingers wide on the way out and slicked his cock up next, the lube shining in the room’s lowlight. It _was_ monstrous, just as big as the rest of him. Everything about Kylo Ren was overlarge -- his body, his facial features, his temper. _All_ his emotions. Kylo lined himself up and pressed in, and Hux bore down on the intrusion, scrunching his eyes closed and breathing out through his nose.

There was only a little bit of a pinch before Kylo was fully seated. Hux should have let him get four fingers in, but he wanted to get through this before the nighttime aches settled in. Kylo’s face was blissful above his, his mouth soft and open and his eyes half-closed. A definitive improvement on the bloody one. Hux felt Kylo push back into his mind too, and sealed off the undercurrents. Kylo was partial to this -- feeling Hux’s side of the dance. Hux rolled his eyes.

“You taste good,” Kylo said defensively. “Like sea air.”

 _Cold_.

“Yes.”

Kylo pulled out and drove himself back in, and Hux’s next thought was lost in static. Kylo moaned this time too. He set a needy rhythm, driving himself into Hux and chasing his own orgasm. It might be inconsiderate if he were not also chasing Hux’s by proxy. Plugged into Hux’s brain, Kylo felt it when he hit Hux’s prostate, and so he did it every time. Pleasure outweighed pain for a time.

“Can you come from this? Without me touching your--”

“No,” Hux hissed. In truth he could if Kylo held out longer, but he wanted this over with. Every extra second was a risk. Hux worked a hand between them and stroked himself, knowing Kylo would come when he did.

“Hux, wait--”

Hux twisted his hand on the upstroke and finished with a grunt, and Kylo’s hips stuttered and jerked forward. He buried himself deep and came. Kylo always shouted when he climaxed, another of his excesses. Even his orgasms were too big. The lights flickered and one blew out, shattering.

“Off. You weigh as much as a bantha,” Hux sighed, carding his fingers through Kylo’s hair. It was always softer than he thought it’d be, somehow. Kylo was breathing hard, collapsed onto him and going soft inside him.

“You’re hiding something.”

“Exit me before you start with your nonsense.”

Kylo pulled out, and Hux grimaced at how wet he felt. He’d have liked a shower, but he’d do without. Kylo sulked when Hux showered after sex. He liked to stew in musk and sweat like an animal, and Hux would only be clean for seconds if he did wash himself. Kylo would sweat all over him again in the night, insisting on sleeping wrapped together.

“What’s bothering you?” Kylo asked, settling himself down next to Hux and pulling Hux in just like Hux knew he would. Hux fit his face against the side of Kylo’s neck and threw an arm over him. His hand was fisted, the joints aching. In his post-orgasm fog Hux couldn’t tell whether Kylo was still in his brain or not. He needed to tread lightly.

“Warlords breathing down my neck,” He mumbled.

Kylo shifted the arm pinned below Hux to run that palm hot up and down his lower back. “They won’t touch you. They wouldn’t dare.”

Hux’s skin prickled unpleasantly. _His pet, his plaything--_ Hux cut the thought off and sent it back down to the writhing depths beneath the lid. What happens to a broken toy? A dying pet? Hux ran the backs of his fingers over the metal place on Kylo’s face, wondering how the sensors compared to nerves. Surely they were worse. He drew a series of aurebesh characters there. If Kylo deciphered them, he stayed mercifully silent on the subject. _Sentimental_ , Hux chided himself.

Kylo’s arm tightened around him. It was born of Kylo’s sense of fond possession, of course, but it triggered the twist of dry rot up Hux’s spine from tailbone to skull. His hips burned too. Hux yelped. That alone was enough -- the charade was over before it had truly begun. Hux felt Kylo wake up from his sex-addled state beside him, alert. Kylo sat up, his grip on Hux gentle, his free hand hovering over Hux’s chest, afraid to press down.

Hux bit his lip and waited for his nerves to stop firing. The ache was bone-deep but it was more than his bones now. It was eating him up. His stomach hurt. His _lungs_ \--

“Hux?” Kylo’s voice, concerned. Verging immediately on panic, because Kylo never felt anything small. In this he was justified.

“Six months,” Hux said, the words that had haunted his mind coming out like vomit. Of course, it had been eight at first.

“What?” Kylo looked down at him, eyes wide. Hux wondered idly if the bloody one might drip if Kylo stayed this way long.

 _You know what I mean_ , Hux told him, and Kylo disconnected so sharply it made Hux wince and jerk his hand up as if to rub the back of his head. He paused and let it fall back down. So Kylo had still been in there after all.

“No,” Kylo said, angry. As though this were a point he could argue.

“Six months,” Hux said again firmly. “The pain will get worse. There’s no cure. This is nothing a bacta tank will fix.” Hux thought suddenly of his father -- hadn’t some nurse or another said that same thing to him once, in the same defeated tone of voice? How it had seemed like a victory then. No, there was no fixing this, and Hux didn’t believe in any afterlife. He’d simply wink out when the time came and cease to exist, and know nothing anymore about the fate of the galaxy. But on the subject of replacements….

“I was thinking that Phasma...stars, she’ll hate the pageantry, but she--”

Kylo interrupted him. “How long have you known?” Hux shut his mouth, looking at Kylo sadly. Kylo cursed, pulling away to sit on the edge of the bed with his face in his hands. “When were you going to tell me?” Kylo’s voice was muffled, but Hux could still hear the tremor in it.

Anger was harder to come by as the months since diagnosis wore on, as if it were draining out of Hux with his life, but it flared now. “You’re not the victim here,” he hissed at Kylo.

“I could have been _searching_ , I could have--” Kylo twisted to glare at Hux, tears streaming down his face. “Never mind. Let me in.” Kylo reached out, intending to grab hold of Hux’s leg and bolster mental connection that way.

Hux yanked his limb away, realizing Kylo’s train of thought and wondering how it hadn’t occurred to him before now that this would be Kylo’s reaction. He shouldn’t have been worried about being discarded. Kylo had a problem with attachment.

“ _No_. I refuse to be an...an experiment for you.”

“Hux--”

“Keep your sorcery to yourself.”

“ _I can save you_ ,” Kylo said, his face and voice desperate. He leaned over and caught Hux’s calf this time, dragging him closer. Hux didn’t think he’d ever felt more ridiculous. He was being tugged around naked with come leaking out of him, science had signed his death warrant, and Kylo Ren was crying over him. In the next instant Kylo was rifling through his memories without his permission. Hux tried to fight it and the pain blinded him.

“Don’t,” Kylo was saying. His voice sounded far away. Underwater. Hux lost his grip on his own brain, feeling as though he tore gouges in it with his proverbial fingernails in his effort to hold his thoughts still, and then they were blinking by again, being sorted through in a manner alien to his own processes. The sense of invasion was all-encompassing. Kylo found what he sought and plucked it out with one last bright flash like taking a plasma shot to the forehead. Hux gasped for breath once he was released. The pain in his body flared up again, fire-bright and sickly rotten, bad enough to make him groan. Hux never thought the word to himself, keeping his diagnosis tucked away, but now there was a ragged hole in his memory where it had been.

“Get out,” Hux rasped, unsure even as he said it whether he meant for Kylo to leave the room or himself. Kylo had already vacated his mind, but never before had he damaged Hux in this way. Hux tried to remember what Kylo had taken and could not. The wound remained. Hux reformed his request. “Put it back.”

“I can’t,” Kylo said petulantly. “You could have told me. You _should_ have.” He looked just as betrayed as Hux felt.

“What do you think this is?” Hux snapped at him. “Do you think you’re…” he searched for a word, “That you’re my husband?” He spat it like venom, and Kylo went white and then red. Hux’s anger drained away. He started to laugh. “Hells, of course you do.”

Kylo’s face went even redder, fit to burst, and he might have choked Hux then. Kylo was not the sort to rise above hurting a dying man in the heat of rage. But Hux’s laughing fit turned into sobbing, and Kylo’s face dulled to a more normal color.

“Hux.”

Hux didn’t answer. Couldn’t have if he tried. He hadn’t cried like this since he was small. He hadn’t cried at all in years, even when the anvil weight of mortality first made itself known hanging above him on a frayed rope.

“I’ll make this right.” Kylo’s voice was solemn. A vow.

“Damn you,” Hux choked out, wiping at his face furiously. Kylo tugged the blanket down and beckoned Hux beneath it. Hux wondered if Kylo would levitate him if he didn’t comply. Probably. What line hadn’t he crossed tonight? Hux let himself be swaddled beneath blankets with Kylo hugging him. He didn’t have either the rage or strength left in him to kick Kylo out of his quarters. He’d missed this.

With time Hux’s breathing slowed and his mind slipped away, the bright point of it dimming like the room’s lights. Kylo blew out the rest in a fit of sparks and then relaxed, his restless energy spent. Dreams glowed behind Hux’s closed eyes, nonsensical snippets of history and fantasy. Kylo habitually snooped in Hux’s dreams, blowing away the ones that featured his late father like putting out an old-fashioned candle. But tonight they were unexpectedly pleasant, and Kylo left him to it.

Kylo carefully disentangled himself from Hux’s sleeping grip and sat up. He gazed at Hux, trying to memorize the way the lights of the teeming city outside illuminated his peaceful face and the ivory planes of his skin. The ability to lay here with Hux and observe him was suddenly under attack. Kylo felt as though he needed to watch Hux all night to ensure that the man stayed. Stayed here, stayed alive. Now that Kylo was attuned to it he couldn’t stop seeing the lines of pain traveling Hux’s body like glaring red saber marks in a destroyed console. Looking at those suddenly filled Kylo with a strange guilt he couldn’t shake. He edged his way off the bed and walked slowly and silently to the balcony, not bothering to redress himself in any way, and leaned over the edge to look at the fall. They were a thousand feet up, clouds swirling below, the lights of speeders glowing through them like floating fog banks over terrestrial roads.

Hux’s face moved on one of Coruscant’s many floating billboards, fifty feet tall, the image unchanging in its vitality. _ENLIST TODAY_ , read the top of it. _We need YOU in the fight against rebel terrorism_ , read the bottom. This particular image of Hux looked regal, but his face was featured on everything from blue milk cartons to cigarra ads. On cigarra fliers he winked. A secondary kind of grief hit Kylo looking at the recruitment ad in front of him. In six months’ time he would lose his lover and his equal. Hux’s interrupted suggestion of _Phasma_ was ludicrous, the action of a man grasping for any handhold in a free fall. Kylo would have more luck in piecing together new holographic appearances from Hux’s old data than in trying to introduce a new Chancellor. And he doubted he’d have the wherewithal to do _anything_ after--

Kylo couldn’t even think about it. His mind skipped over the fact of Hux’s mortality like a blank space, unrecognizable. It made him feel foolish. Until now they’d both been untouchable in Kylo’s mind, even surrounded by the horrors of war. And now, the enemy was not a rebel ship or an assassin’s needle. It was Hux’s own biology.

 _Six months_.

“Shit,” Kylo said to the open air, hissing it out between his teeth. “Shit, shit shit _shit_ …” The hive of the capital city stole the words, consuming them. In six months Hux’s mind would go dark and his body would be disposed of, and he would be lost to Kylo. He wasn’t connected to the Force. He would not return to haunt Kylo’s every step, and yet Kylo would be haunted. The negative space where Hux’s mind should be would drive him insane.

Kylo placed a kiss on Hux’s temple before leaving. Hux would be angry, but he wouldn’t expect any different than to wake alone. It was their routine. Kylo had places to be. That had never been more true than it was now.

**Author's Note:**

> This had more than one inspiration -- primarily, sternfleck's tweet ab Hux having a chronic or terminal illness. I didn't specify which one here but patterned his symptoms off my own (the difference being that I'm chronically ill, not terminally). Also obviously inspired by DOTF script leak. There was a tweet ab First Order gifting rituals and I sadly cannot remember who tweeted it, I did not screenshot it. The grenade/socks bit is from cast interviews. What do you think Hux spelled out on Kylo’s face?
> 
> I might follow up with more later feat. Kylo trying to keep Hux alive via the Force.


End file.
